For Mike Chemotti -- real name "Modesto" -- his pattern Monday was part of a well-established routine. As he's done for years on the first Monday of every month, he showed up at the Stanley B. Pennock VFW Post in Solvay for the regular meeting of the Solvay-Geddes Veterans.

This time, as official guest of honor, Mike did what he could to keep it all low-key. He sat at a folding table across from an old friend, Bill Waters. They both went to work on plates of pasta, and they drank their Budweiser from paper cups. The only unusual thing about the meal were the slices of chocolate cake, set out on napkins.

It was birthday cake. Last week, Mike turned 100.

The announcement was applauded by the other veterans -- about 50 guys, most with white hair, all with roots in Geddes and Solvay. Mike smiled, lifted one arm in a quiet gesture of thanks, then returned to his pasta.

Was hitting 100 a big deal?

"I'm glad to get there," Mike said. "But then what do you do?"

Waters laughed. He's 90. When he thinks of reaching 100, he's impressed. Like others in the group, he showed up for a meeting that began at about the same time as the opening tip for the Syracuse University-Notre Dame men's basketball game. Sally Zollo, president of the Solvay-Geddes Veterans, figured the game and the weather would keep attendance down.

Dozens of men -- many in their 80s and 90s -- still came out on a February night. They spoke in the tough, distinctive language of Solvay, and they were there to offer their best to Mike Chemotti: child of immigrants, standout athlete, Syracuse University football walk-on in 1936, Army veteran of World War II, retired printer and liquor store owner, great-grandfather, widower to his beloved Margaret ...

Mike arrived with his son Don, of Skaneateles, who noted that his dad still drives. Don compared the magnitude of his father's 100th birthday to hitting 500 home runs in the Major Leagues, and Waters offered an appreciative nod.

"We played golf together, we bowled together, we still play pitch together," said Waters, kickstarting an animated back and forth between two guys with 190 combined years of Solvay perspective. They stopped only when the Rev. Jack Kissel, 83, another member of the group, stood up to offer an opening prayer.

Waters figures he's got license to be irreverent. He described himself as a "young guy" compared to his 100-year-old buddy, which made Mike smile. Until a year ago, Waters would go out before every Memorial Day to put down flags on the graves of hundreds of veterans. His knees aching, he reluctantly gave it up.

That decision, Zollo said, underlines the greatest challenge facing the club: Its roster holds about 160 active members, including one man serving in Afghanistan. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the Solvay-Geddes Veterans included hundreds who'd served in World War II, Vietnam or what veteran Joe Micheletti, 90, referred to as "the Korean affair."

What's changing was made clear during official business. The members paused for a difficult monthly routine: They brought up the names of old friends who'd died in recent weeks, or those now in the hospital. When the officers mentioned how one man had recovered from surgery and was about to leave for Florida, the entire place let out a great sigh of relief.

The organization needs younger veterans, said Zollo, who served in the Air Force. It needs them to help with Memorial Day ceremonies. It needs them for meetings, for community work, for outreach to older vets.

For now, those core members -- good-natured and indomitable -- keep on coming.
The hall is a classic remnant of postwar America: Linoleum floors, cinderblock walls, folding tables, chairs that you can stack. It was once part of the old St. Charles complex, members said. When a new church went up, the older structure was moved to Charles Avenue and became a veterans hall.

To Mike Chemotti and Bill Waters, that doesn't seem so long ago. Asked about plans by Onondaga County and the state to spend millions of dollars on a lakefront amphitheater in Solvay, they said they remember what that spot used to be. Eighty years ago or so, they said, it held a beach. The trolley ran that way, and Mike said you'd "go up a wooden bridge, over the railroad tracks," if you wanted to stop by for some clams and a
beer.

That touched off another burst of memories -- about the war, about the neighborhoods where they grew up, about the time in 1943 when the Solvay waste beds overflowed onto the streets of the village and Waters' dad, with Solvay Process, had to help clean up the mess.

The conversation ended when Zollo read a message from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, congratulating Mike on hitting 100. Ronald Benedetti, the mayor of Solvay, showed up to shake Mike's hand and to make a proclamation in his honor. "I knew your father!" Mike told the 68-year-old mayor.

Then the other members gathered around to slap Mike on the shoulder, before they grabbed their jackets and got ready to head home: There was still time to catch the second half of Syracuse-Notre Dame, and Mike Chemotti -- at 100 -- is a student of the game.

"They're terrific," he said of the undefeated Orange. What sets this year's players apart, he said, is the way "they know how to close," the way they show the strength to keep getting better, toward the end.